PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners pulled a request for proposals and consultant qualifications for the shoreline planning update from today’s meeting agenda.
County planners need to integrate state and federal grants and refine the scope of work to clarify exactly what the consultants will bid on.
“We still don’t have a contract from EPA [Environmental Protection Agency],” said Steve Gray, Clallam County planning manager, in a project update for the three commissioners on Monday.
“We’re still going on faith that the money is there, but we were trying not to get too ahead of the game.”
Clallam County is in the early stages of a state-mandated update to its 18-year-old Shoreline Master Program.
The planning document will guide waterfront development with a “no net loss” requirement of ecological functions, public access and natural characteristics of shorelines.
The commissioners will open the bidding process July 6.
A three-year, $550,000 state grant for the planning project expires in June 2012.
The consultants will help Department of Community Development staffers take an inventory and characterize 800 miles of marine and freshwater shoreline.
They will lead regional forums planned for Sequim, Port Angeles, Joyce, Clallam Bay-Sekiu and Forks to gather public input on shoreline access and environmental protection.
They will survey landowners, environmentalists, natural resources managers, tribes, county shoreline advisory groups and shoreline users before drafting policies.
“We’ll be relying heavily on them [the consultants] to get that input through a variety of means,” Gray said.
In March, Commissioners Mike Doherty, Mike Chapman and Steve Tharinger approved a public participation strategy for the shoreline update, which includes several rounds of public hearings.
Shoreline plans have been controversial in other areas, such as Jefferson County, because they come with buffer zones that restrict development near certain marine, lake and river shores.
The planning documents are a requirement of the 1972 Shoreline Management Act, which is intended to “prevent the inherent harm in an uncoordinated and piecemeal development of the state’s shorelines,” according to the state Department of Ecology.
All of Washington’s cities and counties with regulated shorelines are required to update their shoreline plans by December 2014.
